Evaluating the Growth and Evolution of Facility Management in Innovating Integrating and Aligning Business Strategies to Achieve a Competitive Advantage

The South African Facilities Management (FM) industry has seen increased operational strategy complexity from single-site contractors providing basic janitorial services to highly integrated and bundled FM service providers.  Despite these major changes, very little research has been conducted on evaluating the effectiveness of FM in innovating, integrating and aligning business strategies to afford FM companies and their clients a competitive advantage.  The paucity of research in this area motivated this study which aimed to evaluate the growth and evolution of FM in innovating, integrating and aligning business strategies to achieve a competitive advantage for FM companies and their clients.  It is accepted that the business strategies employed by FM companies are a function of the internal and external environments that they faced with. In evaluating the business strategies adopted by FM companies, it emerged that the FM industry relies on established evaluation models that are designed for strategic management purposes, as the FM industry does not have industry specific evaluation tools. In this article, the concept of FM is defined and explained. The emergence and growth of the FM industry globally is reported on. Special emphasis is placed on the South African FM industry. Established business strategies and conventional wisdom is tested against the backdrop of an emerging South African economy, within which the FM industry is still in its infancy. An empirical study that was conducted with FM companies based in Gauteng (South Africa) to determine the impact of FM in innovating, integrating and aligning business strategies to achieve a competitive advantage is reported on.